Restore Passenger Rail spokesman James Cockle told media the group’s demands are for affordable nationwide passenger rail and free urban public transport.

What do these people have against buses? We have a fairly decent intercity bus network, which is affordable and reasonably fast, in fact faster than the train in most cases. Let rail handle freight, it's what rail does well.

In addition to being out of touch with reality, this is also not how you get people to support your cause.

[–] ciaocibai 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah busses are potentially part of the solution, but decent rail connections can be more disruptive (positively) over longer distances e.g Welly - Palmy, Auckland - Hamilton etc.

Having previously lived in China and experiencing the amazing train network there I definitely see the benefits of a solid rail system. Way more efficient than busses too.

Nuts to me that places like Wellington had pretty good electric bus systems with trolley busses but replaced them largely with diesel. Not sure what the bus fleet is like now though.

Also not sure why you are being downvoted for a pretty reasonable discussion.

[–] Ilovethebomb 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit is fucking weird about trains, and it looks like that has filtered over to here.

Our bus fleet is mostly battery electric now.

[–] Rangelus 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Didn't all the trolley busses get scrapped in favor of Diesel some time ago?

[–] Ilovethebomb 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The plan was to replace them with battery electric buses, with the diesels being a stop-gap measure.

To nobody's surprise, the new buses took a lot longer to arrive than expected, but they are mostly there.

[–] Rangelus 2 points 1 year ago

Ah nice. It's been a while I've been in Welly, so I wasn't sure what the current status is.

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